Customer Reviews

The New Irish Table: 70 Contemporary Recipes

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Margaret Johnson has struck gold again. This book is a wonderful journey through the world of New Irish cooking. The pictures are breathtaking. These are recepies you will want to try out in your own home! Thanks again Mrs. Johnson for keeping us close to Ireland.

`The New Irish Table' and `Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools' by Irish-American culinary journalist, Margaret M. Johnson who seems to provide low end books covering Irish culinary practice, beginning with her `The Irish Heritage Cookbook', also from Chronicle Books. The middle ground, being the `Julia Child' for Irish cooking is Darina Allen, along with husband, Tim Allen and mother in law, Myrtle Allen, all of the Cork culinary powerhouse, Ballymaloe House and Cooking School. The high end of modern Irish cooking is held by Irish-American culinary academician and chef, Noel C. Cullen. The ethnographic corner of Irish / Celtic foodways is filled out by `Celtic Folklore Cooking' by culinary writer and folklorist, JoAnne Asala of Chicago. There are many more Irish cookbooks to cover between now and St. Patrick's Day, but this pretty much covers most major points on the culinary compass for Irish cooking.

`The New Irish Table' and Cullen's `Elegant Irish Cooking' complement one another pretty well, as they both present recipes from modern Irish hospitality centers. The difference is that where Johnson is covering pubs and `bed and breakfast' style eateries, Cullen is covering dishes from Michelin one and two star restaurants in Ireland, as well as many of his own creations as a working chef, before he took up teaching at Boston University.

Between these two featured books, Johnson's Desserts book is a much more valuable addition to your cookbook collection, as it includes a lot of fancy and holiday desserts which I have not seen in any other good book on Irish cooking. The best thing about this book and its companion is that like a lot of Chronicle Books, it seems to be on a fast track to the Bargain Book table, both real and on-line. That means that at half price, this book is a real bargain for the cookbook collector with a genuine interest in dessert baking.

On the surface, this book seems to feature four basically different kinds of baking. The six chapters are:

1. Puddings
2. Tarts
3. Crumbles and Crisps
4. Fools and Flummeries
5. Tea Breads and Cakes
6. Christmas Treats

Anyone familiar with English cooking will recognize in the first chapter a wide range of desserts which the Anglo-Irish all lump together under the name of `pudding'. Actually, most puddings remind me a lot of French Toast, more properly called `pain perdu' by the French. They are all different ways of combining day old bread, custard, dried fruits and the like into a treat for the sweet tooth. Puddings and tarts, together, form a collection of dishes very familiar to those who know English sweets.

Crumbles and Crisps and Fools and Flummeries all seem remarkably like a style of dessert which is very popular in the United States and commonly associated with both the Pennsylvania Dutch and southeastern and south central styles of cooking. In Ireland, as in the United States, they are all primarily ways of combining stewed or jellied fruit with oats, milk and perhaps some custard. The thing that distinguishes `fools' from other similar desserts is the fact that they are made with gooseberries. A gooseberry, according to my `Berry Bible' illustration, looks a lot like a current, and just a bit like a blueberry, and seem to be common in the United States only in the northern west coast.

The breads and cakes chapter visits the most widely familiar realm of Irish baking, the world of soda breads and scones. This realm is covered much better in Tim Allen's `The Ballymaloe Bread Book', but the last chapter in this book makes the whole book worth the budget price of admission.

This last chapter is a bonanza for those looking for something interesting to bake for Christmas, especially if you are fond of confections which include a bit of stout or Irish whiskey in the ingredients. This chapter brings the tired old fruitcake into a whole New World of cakes, puddings, ice creams, breads, mince pies, and cider sauces.

The second book, `The New Irish Table' has but 70 recipes, all of which seem to be high end bar food, especially since about 75% of the pages are dedicated to appetizers and side dishes. The five chapters on recipes are:

Small Bites with 9 recipes for crackers, tartlets, pates, crostini, cheese bites, and chutneys.
Starters with 15 recipes for soups, salads, souffles, charlottes, sauces, and sabayon.
Main Courses with 16 recipes for fish, duck, chicken, lots of pork, lamb, venison, rabbit, and pheasant.
Side Dishes with 13 recipes of old standards such as colcannon, champ, boxty, cabbage, turnips, and leeks.
Sweets with 17 recipes for puddings, custards, brulees, cakes, tarts, cobblers, and crumbles.

All in all, if you already have one or two books on Irish savoury dishes and you get Johnson's dessert book, this volume becomes largely redundant. A lot of the sidebars between the two books are the same and the `Irish Table' simply confirms everything I already know about the heavy Irish use of apples, pears, berries, dairy, beer, whiskey, pork, and lamb.

Since you can get this cheap, I will recommend it as a small, inexpensive addition to your Irish cookbook collection. It may, however, be the first in line for regifting if you already own a few Irish cookbooks.

I have been a fan of Margaret Johnson for many years now and her latest publication is her best yet! The beautiful pictorial presentation of this book is bested only by Margaret's poetic descriptions of Irish fare. The irish tastes described by Margaret will transform the reader (and chef) to the emerald isle. It is a journey that anyone with an ounce of irish blood cannot miss! The "irishcook" has done it again!! This book is a must have!!

Margaret Johnson's latest book is a visual and culinary delight! Through her wonderfully ethnic recipes, Margaret invites all readers into her Irish family. My family usually has an italian course during its holiday celebrations, but Margaret's fare has inspired me so much that I am going to recommend that the red-sauced staples are replaced by the the delacacies outlined in this wonderful work (I just hope my mother-in-law agrees). Margaret--thank you for opening my eyes to this cuisine...you are an emerald jewel of Ireland!

The New Irish Table is a treasure of a book featuring gorgeous photos of Ireland taken by Ms. Johnson and 70 recipes from Irish hoteliers, country house chefs and others, both in Ireland and the States.

An introduction explains Ms. Johnson's Irish heritage and her first trip to Ireland in 1984. Food, she explained was the last thing on her mind, however, in subsequent visits, a culinary revolution had ensued, and the entire country was clamoring for traditional foods served in exciting new ways.

Ireland has always had an abundance of the world's finest dairy products, meats and fish, but the food suffered from poor cooking and poor presentation. That began to change in the early eighties. Myrtle Allen was a pioneer in the Irish Country House B&B trade with an emphasis on fresh, local food. Since then, superb cuisine has taken the country by storm. In this colorful volume, Ms. Johnson offers recipes to bring Ireland to your own home with staples such as Colcannon, the potato and cabbage treat, to brown bread creme brulee to smoked salmon. Many of the dishes use Farmhouse cheeses. One I'm particularly interested to try is a potato pancake with Cashel Blue.

The book covers appetizers, starters, meats and fish, side dishes and sweets. You'll find recipes using black pudding and pork belly, but also wonderful roast breast of duck and lamb shanks.

The photography is superb, both for the dishes and the scenery. Apparently Ms. Johnson has tastes similar to me as many of the photos are of places I've been, restaurants where I've eaten (The Farm Gate in Midleton, County Cork and McDonagh's in Galway.)

While the emphasis is on the foods of West Cork, there are also recipes from other regions including Northern Ireland. Besides an index, there's a section in the back of the book telling where to get some of the specialty foods listed. Ms. Johnson also offers suitable substitutions for foods only available in Ireland.

A wonderful book for the photos and the recipes. You'll not want to be without this one.

In The New Irish Table: 70 Contemporary Recipes Margaret M. Johnson provides recipes for what she dubs the "New Irish Cuisine." For her this cuisine is best described as "a style of cooking that uses local ingredients and based on traditional dishes." By this aim Johnson accomplishes her intent. The book is full of interesting and restaurant-quality dishes that use traditional and local Irish ingredients in an interesting way. This isn't to say the recipes are unsusual or unexpected, but they do debunk any notions that Irish food is old fashioned or flavorless.

The cookbook is a good cross section of recipes with small bites, starters, main courses, side dishes, and sweets. It also includes interesting sidebars about pairing wine with Irish cheeses, Irish markets, etc. Basically these sections are great for anyone who wants to understand more of the story behind the ingredients and become more familiar with Ireland's cuisine.

Although the recipes I have tried thus far have all been good (the Lamb Cutlets with Honey, Apricot, and Tarragon Sauce; Potato, Parsnip, and Apple Puree, and Guinness Brownies have been among the most memorable) I have a few quibbles with this cookbook.

The first is that there are many instances in which the introductions to the recipes and instructions themselves could be clearer or more thorough in order to ensure success with the recipes. The guinness brownies were the clearest example for me. Johnson gives no indication of what the final texture will be so when the brownies come out VERY fudgy and almost molten its hard to tell if that is the intent or if they should be baked longer. With the stated baking time these were just too liquidy for my taste (even though I have made brownies with a mousse-like texture before) so I ended up baking them for longer. They ended up turning out well, but I wasn't very confident when serving them to guests. There were also some instances in which Johnson called for things like Cornish hens, split down the center, which could require more explanation for a beginning cook.

I was also disapointed that all of the main courses in this book revolved around meat or seafood. She makes a comment earlier in the book how vegetarian dishes are growing in popularity so to me it was an oversight that none were included in the main course section, especially since elsewhere in the book she includes a recipe from the owner of a vegetarian restaurant.

Despite these criticisms, the book is still enjoyable to cook from. I wouldn't say the recipes included are earthshatteringly unique, but they do taste good. I only wish the main course section was not so "meat and potatoes focused" and that the directions were clearer and more thorough. I recommend previewing the book at the library or book store first to see if it meets your needs.

Had company over to dinner and used recipes out of book. They all raved about the food.